We officially ended production for Brush it Off on May 5th, and uploaded it to YouTube. We followed our strict production schedule and despite some clear flaws in the “final” render, I’m proud to say it’s done (for now).

As Zori mentioned before, we’re starting our next project called Egg Toast! Which is going to be about...hot...pot? Don’t worry about it. Just know that it’s going to be a really fun short -- and by short, I mean short.

The pitch for this is a compilation of random shots of hot pot ingredients synced to the beat of the music here: https://vimeo.com/39758142. We all got assigned our ingredients and parts of the music:

The great thing about this project is that each shot is independent of each other. This is important because people will unavailable/busy throughout this month whether it’s because of vacation, school, or work. So by keeping the shots independent, we’re less likely to be blocked by the production pipeline. As an animator who started out with online stick figure collaborations, I feel right at home with this project. This is exactly how flash animation communities back in the golden age of flash animation worked together. I really like it because it lets us showcase our unique styles and talent.

So far, I’ve made a layout of my animation. Basically the enoki mushrooms are going to split in half and fall over. I also animated a single mushroom to test out my workflow. Basically, I’m going to animate the stem of the mushroom first, then draw in the head, and then plop the face on the head. Then I rinse and repeat this for 18 other mushrooms! No big deal. It only took like 3 hours for 1 mushroom. 3 x 18 = 54 hours...for 4 seconds of animation. Well, welcome to 2d animation I guess. Hopefully I’ll get faster at it once I get into that animation groove.

Anyways, I’m still excited for this project! Some of us haven’t actually tried hot pot before. So for research, we plan on getting hot pot together! Stay tuned for a vlog or something.